


Coffee on the Corner

by Sholio



Category: White Collar
Genre: Gen, Pre-Season/Series 01, could be taken as gen or flirting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-03
Updated: 2019-10-03
Packaged: 2020-10-27 23:54:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,257
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20769056
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sholio/pseuds/Sholio
Summary: Alex has an errand in New York, pre-series.





	Coffee on the Corner

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sheenianni](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sheenianni/gifts).

Kate's new apartment, the one she moved into after Neal went to prison, is in a brownstone up three flights of stairs. It's a nice place, an interesting mix of homey and upscale. There are flowers in Kate's windowbox.

Is she still in the life? Alex wonders, watching from the window of the empty apartment across the street. The tenants are out of town for a month, as she determined by reading their mail and speaking briefly to other tenants in the guise of an interested would-be renter, and bypassing their lock and alarm system was child's play. She hopes Kate is savvy enough to have upgraded her own.

It's hard to tell, watching her, if Kate has left the life or not. She comes and goes semi-randomly, but then Neal would have taught her not to follow a pattern, and even with most of Kate and Neal's collective acquisitions confiscated by the FBI, surely she has enough to live on comfortably.

Alex doesn't follow her too closely, because she suspects Kate is smart enough to spot a tail. Mainly she just cases the place, in between her other work, and tries to pick up a sense of Kate's movements and Kate's ... everything.

She's not sure why. She doesn't owe it to Neal. One reason why she and Neal _worked_ is because they didn't tie strings to each other. People drop in and out of this life all the time. She never expected it to last, with Neal.

But Kate, she thinks, did. On some level. Kate is a good grifter, but she's not made for this life the way Alex is, the way Neal was.

In the end, somewhat to her own surprise, she opts for the direct approach. She could get into Kate's apartment easily enough, but part of Alex's stock in trade is reading people, and she doesn't think she'd accomplish anything that way ... except maybe get herself shot; she has a suspicion that Kate is not going unarmed these days. Alex thinks she probably wouldn't be, with her boyfriend in prison and the FBI on her scent.

Then again, she wouldn't have stayed in the same city. And Kate's not her.

Still, she has a feeling that any conversation that starts with breaking into Kate's apartment probably won't end in a friendly kind of way, so instead she walks openly up to the little cafe table where Kate is sipping coffee and reading a newspaper, and sits down across from her.

Kate gives a little gasp and shuffles the newspaper, and Alex catches the quick vanishing of documents that Kate has been using the newspaper to conceal. Alex smiles a little. She doesn't really want to know what it is, whether Kate's working a job or working on Neal's case -- it's clearly not entirely on the up and up, whatever Kate is working on, and that's really all Alex needs to know about Kate still being in the life, whether she thinks of herself that way or not.

"What do you want?" Kate asks shortly.

It's odd ... as many times as Alex has rehearsed this conversation in her head, she's never had a good answer for that. It's partly because of Neal, and partly curiosity, and partly something she doesn't quite want to call concern, but maybe it _is_ that. It's hard not to be concerned about Kate, with her big eyes and her air of innocent waifdom. Alex knows that Kate made a living off that waifish look, used it to reel in the marks, and she still finds herself not entirely immune.

"Maybe I'm in town and I wanted to visit an old friend," she says.

"We were never friends." Kate sips her coffee. "If you have something to say, say it, or I'm walking away."

"I wanted to see how you were doing."

"Try again."

"I wanted to find out how Neal was doing."

Strangely enough, of all the reasons she came, that's the least of them. She feels for him, she really does. But she also figures that Neal made his bed with the FBI, and anyway, it's only four years: he'll make connections, learn new skills, get out stronger and tougher and better. But it's the reason she thinks Kate will be most likely to believe, and she's not wrong; there's a subtle relaxing, a shift in Kate's tension -- not that Kate is any less alert, but she's more confident, now that Alex's motives add up to something she understands.

"Visit him yourself," she says, and takes a sip from her cup.

Alex laughs aloud. "Funny."

Kate gives her a look over the top of the cup, and it sinks in slowly: Kate wasn't joking. Kate _has_ been going to visit Neal. That's a revelation that takes Alex a moment to get over. You don't _do_ that, walk into a prison waiting room, put yourself in their hands, put your credentials in your hands; you just _don't._ It doesn't matter if it's your lover or your mother or your last hope. You _don't._

But Kate does. It never, in all those times that Kate left the apartment, occurred to Alex that Kate might be going to see Neal; she never tailed her that far.

She's honestly not sure whether this makes her assessment of Kate go up or down. The woman has gold-plated steel ovaries, that's for sure. Or else she's just coming from such a different frame of reference that Alex doesn't _get_ her, not a mark and not part of the life, but somewhere in between. 

People are dangerous when you can't figure them, don't know which way they're going to jump.

But they're also interesting. She always liked that about Neal, too.

"Planning a jailbreak?" Alex says. "Going to bake him a file in a cake?"

Kate folds her newspaper carefully and sets it beside her cup. The waiter stops by and offers her a refill. Kate places her hand over her cup, and he turns to Alex. She considers it, but a cup of coffee would be longer than she now feels it's safe to stay. She shakes her head.

"None of your business," Kate says after the waiter leaves.

"Look." Alex isn't sure what it is about Kate that wrings sincerity from her. Maybe it's those damn waif eyes. Maybe it's the feeling that with five fewer years of the grifter's life behind her, she might _be_ Kate. "He'll be out in three and a half. You don't need to go down with him."

"I was there when the FBI arrested him," Kate says. "They didn't take me then. They're not going to."

Is that how it was? _Only because they're giving you enough rope to hang yourself,_ she thinks, but doesn't say. Some lessons you have to learn on your own.

Instead she gets up, but places a folded origami flower on the table between them. Folded up inside the petals is the address of a burnable dead drop. "If you need me," she says.

"What would I need you for?" Kate asks, and Alex only smiles.

"It's always good to have friends," Alex says, and she walks away.

That night, because she's leaving town anyway, she leaves another origami rose tucked under Kate's window, alarm system disabled and window raised just a smidge. She's no longer worried about spooking Kate; she's more concerned that Kate isn't spooked enough.

She doesn't stick around to watch Kate find it; she's off to Amsterdam on the next available flight, under a different woman's name.


End file.
